Lulu.com Self Publishing

[carlaking]

Ha! Great book title! You’re right. The overwhelming majority of authors who use these services sell under 200 books. Here’s the link to the articles I was talking about:<snip>self-promotional link removed</snip>
Best,
Carla

[Ravedesigns]

Andrew - I don’t know how well or if their services are offered in the UK, but I just tried publishing with Amazon’s “Create Space” service and couldn’t be happier.

I’d say their process isn’t quite as refined as Lulu’s - but I had a proof printed and delivered w/their standard shipping in less than 3 days and the quality was about the same as Lulu’s.

They do take a larger percentage of the sales price, but your books now listed in the amazon marketplace, and if you want to order copies for yourself the prices are comparable to Lulu.

HTH,

Steve

[system]

@wildscribe

I’m not sure if you need to spend a lot of time trying to find a publisher.

If you already have a good idea, by all means consider publishing it yourself.

I think there is a lot of interest in “how-to” books. If you can write something useful, like “Create an ecommerce site with Joomla” and then price it properly, you might have something. Be sure to have someone copy edit it and ask a friend to check all the examples to make sure they work before you put it on sale.

Good Luck,

Wild

I agree, if you have the idea and the confidence, do not waste time looking out for publishers do it yourself. Good ideas sell well!!!

[AndrewCooper]

@AlexDawson

Perhaps if you don’t have the experience, you could build yourself up to a book by writing articles for websites and blogs… you get paid for the work (if it’s accepted), it gives you exposure (professionally) and it gives you an idea of what book writing is like (at a basic level).

Agreed. I was producing my own tutorial Website at one time last year, but I procrastinated. I’m re-launching it this year and if that becomes popular then perhaps that could be my writing articles for Websites / Blogs part. I did send an E-Mail to SitePoint about writing a Web Design article but they haven’t got back to me yet, meh, I’ll have to have a think over ideas for useful and unique articles!

@AlexDawson

The 6 months was full time writing, I ended up (some days) spending anywhere between 6-10 hours a day. I am not the fastest typist and my book is pretty page heavy, but still… it’s not some part time flurry, it requires a lot of hard work, and that includes post release where you market the book to let people know it’s out

Damn! 6 - 10 hours a day is a lot of work indeed. I know a book is a hefty undertaking - I’ll have to think about it more and read a bit more about author’s stories and so on to see whether I’ll make the cut or not! Thanks for the feedback Alex, much appreciated.

@SpacePhoenix

I would be interested to find out the experiences of some of SitePoint’s authors as to what they thought of the process and what they would do different if they were to get another book published.

I second that too! :tup:

@carlaking

Ha! Great book title! You’re right. The overwhelming majority of authors who use these services sell under 200 books. Here’s the link to the articles I was talking about: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/carla-king/
Best,
Carla

Hey Carla, is that really true about selling under 200 books? It isn’t a lot is it? I would think it would be because of various contributing and non-contributing factors that led to such a low amount of book sales. Thanks for the article link too.

@Ravedesigns

Andrew - I don’t know how well or if their services are offered in the UK, but I just tried publishing with Amazon’s “Create Space” service and couldn’t be happier.

I’d say their process isn’t quite as refined as Lulu’s - but I had a proof printed and delivered w/their standard shipping in less than 3 days and the quality was about the same as Lulu’s.

They do take a larger percentage of the sales price, but your books now listed in the amazon marketplace, and if you want to order copies for yourself the prices are comparable to Lulu.

HTH,

Steve

Hey Steve! Thanks for replying again! I was going to PM you to see if you went anywhere with CreateSpace as you said you were going to try them out. I’m not too sure if they do offer it in the UK, I think they do though. I think it’s definitely a tough choice between CreateSpace and Lulu, but Lulu sounds like the better option for me at the moment - Although things might have changed by the time I’ve finished my book! Haha

@businessminder

I agree, if you have the idea and the confidence, do not waste time looking out for publishers do it yourself. Good ideas sell well!!!

Thanks for the encouragement, I think I’ll think it through a bit more though rather than go running in to it!

Wow, this thread has been amazingly helpful! I would imagine others can take something from this thread too, I’d hope so anyway! I guess it’s more of a matter of having a great idea that can sell, rather whether to publish with a company or self-publish with a service. We’ll see what happens I guess! Thank you all though! Wish me luck, hehe!

Andrew Cooper